About three years ago a group of beer-loving businessmen hatched the plan to open a brewery in Cathlamet, Washington. Today, the dream has come to life. Drop Anchor Brewery is open for business, with a grand opening celebration scheduled for Saturday, May 3rd.
The brewery is located about 25 miles west of Longview, overlooking the marina in the small town of Cathlamet. One of the founders behind Drop Anchors Brewery. Andy Lea, is not exactly new to the beer biz. He worked for Pyramid Brewing back when the brewery was located in Kalama, Washington and Pyramid had yet to evolve into what it is today.
There is a lot of information available on the Drop Anchor Brewery website. Below, brewer bios provided by the brewery. The images were also provided by the brewery.
The Brewers
Andy Lea started his brewing career in 19– at “Pyramid Brewing” in Kalama WA. Andy started at the bottom cleaning tanks and shoveling grains. Over the next 10 years Andy worked his way up to one of the brewers and over saw the large operation.
Andy’s love of brewing started when he was—- he loved to experiment with home brew kits (that is if you ever did that) trying out different formulas. After working at Pyramid for 10 years the brewery was so successful that they moved to Seattle, However Andy chose to stay in the SW Washington area. – Pyramid’s loss our find –
His love of brewing has never stopped. Andy has been home brewing to keep his skills sharp and to experiment with different yeast blends, grains etc. Now Andy has his own brewery to work his magic. We are very lucky to have somebody of his experience to help us set up and grow our small local brewery, and to ensure we provide excellent products.
Steve Sharp has always loved beer, so much so that in 1900 he chose to attend the school of brewing in Portland. It was a perfect fit, Steve found brewing to be not only fun, but challenging. I love the fact they you have to be right on and how just a little change can make or break your batch of beer.
Brewing has become something that he loves. “After a stressful week I will go into my little brewery and slip into my brew life, I find it very rewarding and calming”. Steve still has the first recipe that he ever made and over the past 5 years he has perfected it to be one of our featured products “broken Hose”. It is the science of beer that interested Steve. All the little details and making sure that each step is followed to make sure that the taste, color, and quality is in each and every glass of beer.
With Andy and Steve our Drop Anchor Brewery will offer a large verity of quality beers for our customers. Our tasting room will be open on Fridays and Saturdays and you will find Andy or Steve hard at work. If you want to meet our brewers contact us and we can set a meeting up for you.
So proud of my favorite brewing brother-in-law!!!!!
in my excitement forgot to mention his name, Steve Sharp!!!
Looking forward to stopping in as we make our way Down river this summer. good luck. Anchors aweigh!